We Americans love our cars. We’re famous for it, well that and the cheap gas prices anyway. Even with the slow demise of the auto industry in recent months, we are still stalwart supports of our vehicles.

With increasing gas prices, traffic, and pollution we are still driving everywhere we can and enjoying (mostly) every minute of it. The Transportation Department reports that there are over 107 million households with an average of 1.9 million cars and 1.8 million drivers. They are big numbers. They equate to 204 million vehicles and 191 million drivers to drive them.

There has been a steady increase in cars over drivers for the past twenty five years as families disintegrate, commuting increases, family wealth increases and more teens wanting to drive. The cars themselves have become longer lasting in this time, with a typical car doing 200,000 miles in its lifetime.

The main reason for having a car is to commute to work or the school run, however people are increasingly acquiring vehicles for specialized purposes. Many families have a “weekend car” which is generally a sports car or SUV. They may drive an efficient car during the week and something a little more fun at the weekend.

A survey carried out by the Transportation Department in 2002 found 91% of commuters use their own cars. 57% of these are cars or station wagons, 21% are vans or SUVs and 19% are light trucks. Only 8% of American families don’t own vehicles.

Since 9/11 more people than ever have been taking to the road for their vacations. Flights are down overall with many people electing to stay closer to home and drive where they need to go. With hundreds of thousands of miles of road, there is no shortage of vacation destinations in the country and just about everywhere has a gas station or garage for auto repairs.

Choice may be becoming more limited and gas prices might be getting slowly higher, but there is no perceived change in our relationship with our cars any time soon. The type of vehicle we purchase is slowly shifting away from gas guzzlers to hybrids or more fuel efficient cars, but we are still driving nonetheless.